Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Pearson issued a "trading update" on their results
Wednesday morning, telling investors they are ready to sell (or recapitalize)
their 47 percent stake in Penguin Random House: "With the integration of
Penguin Random House complete, and with greater industry-wide stability on
digital terms, we intend to issue an exit notice regarding our 47 percent stake
in Penguin Random House to our JV partner Bertelsmann in the contractual
window, with a view to selling our stake or recapitalizing the business and extracting
a dividend."

While those reasons are valid and Pearson was expected to use the window
available to them starting January 1 this year to exit trade publishing, they
also need the cash as the company reported "the North American higher
education courseware market was much weaker than expected" and will remain
so. They reduced their earnings guidance for 2017 and withdrew any guidance for
2018 while they execute yet another restructuring. They will also
"rebase" their dividend going forward, after 24 years of steady
increases -- and Pearson shares were bid down by more than 25 percent in early
trading in London. Pearson's value has declined by about £1.85 billion on the
profit warning.

Majority owner of PRH Bertelsmann was ready with a statement
of their own, with ceo Thomas Rabe saying: "The book-publishing business
has created a sense of identity for Bertelsmann for more than 180 years. It is
our oldest core business. Accordingly, we are open to increasing our stake in
Penguin Random House, provided the financial terms are fair. Strategically this
would not only strengthen one of our most important content businesses, it
would also once further strengthen our presence in the United States, our
second largest market."

For more on Pearson's decision to sell its PRH stake, visit
PublishersMarketplace.com.

At St. Martin's Press, Laura Clark has been
promoted to associate publisher, nonfiction, reporting to Jennifer Enderlin.
"What impresses me most about Laura is her passion, her can-do attitude,
her breadth of knowledge in so many varied areas of non-fiction," Enderlin
said in the announcement. "She is the natural choice for this position, as
we gear up for some of the most important non-fiction this house has ever
published.

At BookPage, Cat Acree has been promoted to deputy editor.

Forthcoming
Bookseller metadata has long
indicated that
Jonathan Allen and Amie
Parnes' forthcoming book on Hillary Clinton was headed for
publication at the beginning of May. Crown has now formally announced the book
will be titled SHATTERED: Inside
Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, with publication moved up April
18. The book "draws on high levels of access to Clinton’s friends, foes,
staff, and factions on both sides of the aisle as well as the authors' deep
knowledge of Clinton from their previous book, HRC," which Crown published
in 2014.

AwardsPEN Americaannounced
the finalists for its literary awards Wednesday morning, including the Jean
Stein Book Award, which gives $75,000 for "a book of extraordinary
originality and lasting influence judged by an anonymous panel without
submissions." The finalists for that award include Colson Whitehead's
National Book Award-winning novel The Underground Railroad;
Dark Money by Jane
Mayer; Hisham Matar's The Return; Olio by Tyehimba
Jess; and Teju Cole's essay collection Known and Strange Things,
which is also a finalist in the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of
the Essay. Cole is the first writer in PEN America's 54-year history to be a
finalist in two categories.

The winners in most categories will be announced on February 22 with the
exception of the winners of the PEN/Nabokov, Jean Stein, Art of the Essay, and
Debut Fiction prizes, to be announced at an awards ceremony on March 27.